It was my first day back from spring break today and it was a wild one. I started the day with a meeting about a door handle (this is true and there were a lot of people in attendance) and ended it in the now empty machine shop in the basement of Space Science. In between I had a fruitful visit to Abercrombie and I was also overjoyed to find several boxes and envelopes that came on the mail while I was gone and which are full of marvelous photographs. (Much more about these after I’ve had time to digest them.) It was a very good day and a pretty one too.

Somewhere in the middle of all this I was walking along the back side side of Rayzor Hall minding my own business when I noticed a small hole near the sidewalk. Upon closer inspection it turned out to contain a surveying mark:

I was instantly on the lookout for the crew (like pole vaulters, they’re always photogenic) and I was not disappointed. As soon as I turned the corner into the quad I saw equipment but no people:

Follow the trail and you eventually always find the people:

They were working in the Engineering Quad, focused on the trees:

I have long since reached the point where everything I see at Rice reminds me of something else. This reminded me of a photograph I had scanned several years ago because I was interested in the process of preparing for the installation of 45° 90° 180°. I didn’t notice until fairly recently that there’s a surveying class working the Engineering Quad:

And I can’t walk through this space without thinking of my friend Carl Knapp ’16 in front of the Mech Lab way back at the beginning:

Everything is different and nothing changes.

Bonus: A more profound transformation took place over break on a tree in front of Tudor Fieldhouse. (Thanks to Nancy Rowe and Jon Rodriguez from FE&P!)

6 Responses to Surveyors in the Engineering Quad: 2017, 1984, and 1913

A strong memory of my misbegotten youth was the locusts (OK, cicadas) that made so much noise in the trees around our house in the Denver Harbor section of Houston. Mom didn’t mind our using them as BB gun targets.

I think Knapp was posing for the camera at the moment the picture was taken. If he was actually surveying at that moment, there should be a plumb bob hanging from the transit tripod.
Barney L. McCoy, Hanszen